“When your friends die you must not cry.” In 1890, Native American tribes throughout the Great Plains relished these words during the wake of the “Ghost Dance” movement. These people were promised a better future in which their dead loved ones will rejoin them in the land of the living and all of the whites who had made them suffer will be washed away from the earth. The Native Americans were told by the self-proclaimed prophet, Wovoka that they would reach their salvation as long as they were to follow the codes of conduct and perform the ritual “Ghost Dance” taught to him by God during his small glimpse of heaven. Selected members of different tribes made pilgrimages to his reserve in Nevada to learn of the aspiring religion and engage in …show more content…
After his father’s death, Wovoka was employed on the Walker family ranch in Mason Valley, Nevada. Wovoka served the family well into his adulthood and became very devoted to the Wilson family. David Wilson, the head of the family was equally attached to Wovoka and bestowed upon him the name of “Jack Wilson,” the name that he was commonly known as by the white population. During his employment, he had learned how to speak English and gained a basic knowledge of Christian theology. He learned that Christ was a “great medicine man who could heal the sick and control the elements.” These teachings would later impact him during his career as a greatly proclaimed prophet and as an eventual messiah to the Native American people. His absorption of western religion continued along with his eventual came contact with the Mormon religion. By 1890, many Mormon families had migrated from Great Salt Lake Valley and settled throughout Nevada. The Mormons at the time had a unique fascination for Native Americans because they were believed to be descendants of the “Ten Lost Tribes” of the original Hebrews. The Mormons believed that the “…lost Hebrew emigrants were still ice-bound in the frozen north, whence they will one day emerge to rejoin their brethren in the south.” The 1870 Ghost Dance movement sparked a series of Native Americans baptisms into the Mormon religion throughout the state of Utah. The Mormons believed that the movement was a sign to finally receive the “long awaited wanderers.” He ultimately rejected the religion’s teachings, but it still left an impact on the movement’s ritual